Show Summary:
In this episode of Admissions Straight Talk, Dr. Beth Piraino, Associate Dean of Admissions at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSOM), explores the school’s innovative Three Rivers Curriculum, emphasizing small-group learning, early clinical exposure, and the integration of “Streams” (special interest areas) and Threads” (core competencies like leadership and clinical reasoning). Dr. Piraino also discusses the role of secondary essays in evaluating applicants and explores why teamwork, resilience, and cultural awareness are important in the admissions process. She goes on to highlight a common mistake applicants make in the application process.
Show Notes:
Our guest today is Dr. Beth Perino, Associate Dean for admissions at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Dr. Piraino graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in biology, and earned her Md. At what is now Drexel Medical School. She returned to the University of Pittsburgh for her residencies in Internal Medicine and Nephrology, and joined the Faculty in 1982. She has held many leadership positions at the University of Pennsylvania University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and is currently a tenured professor of medicine and associate Dean of admissions and financial aid at UPSOM.
Dr. Piraino welcome to Admissions Straight Talk.
Well, thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Great. We’re happy to have you.
Can you start by giving us an overview of UPSOM’s curriculum and specifically the Three Rivers curriculum focusing on its more distinctive elements?
Right. So the Three Rivers curriculum was something that the curriculum committee worked on for several years. It’s very, very much focused on small group learning. The students are broken up into 16 groups. There’s about nine students per group, and they have a longitudinal educator. So these are faculty who have volunteered to do this. They’re getting some salary support. So there’s a relationship between the longitudinal educator and the small group. Some of the kind of innovative things on it are the flex week. So there are about five different times in the first year and a half, which is the preclinical, where the students take a break from the regular curriculum, and they do another activity, and they get a lot of choice on that. So the clinical year starts after the winter break in the second year. So it’s been moved up a bit. There’s a lot of new things about the curriculum. It’s working out very well.
That’s great. How long has it been around since 19-20?
So the second year students are the first that have entered this curriculum. So the first year class are the second class to be in this curriculum.
I noticed that you seem to have compressed the didactic portion of the curriculum. Am I correct?
Correct. That’s correct. So the basic science portion goes up to the winter break, and then they start the block system which we had before. But now it starts in January of the 1st year and then they still get the summer off. Between the 1st and second year. Almost all of our students actually do research during that. But that’s optional, and they come back and they finish the blocks. Then January in the second year is study time for step one. Once they take the step, once they start their clinical rotations.
Wow! That’s pretty good. That’s pretty pretty fast, and they already have some clinical exposure.
From the beginning they learn how to take a history, do a physical exam. We have a lot of actor patients that we use for that.
What are the Streams and the Threads in the curriculum? And what is the difference between them?
Well, the Streams used to be our areas of concentration. So these are areas where students have a special interest. They get together in small groups. They have a faculty mentor, and then they do extra activities around that. So, for instance, it might be on neuroscience, or it might be on disability medicine, could be geriatrics, could be addiction medicine, or they could do things like primary care or global population. So there’s a lot of different areas that they could get involved in. But it’s kind of extracurricular.
The Threads are woven into the curriculum, just like a thread is in cloth, and these are things like clinical reasoning, which is extremely important for a physician, medicine, interprofessionalism, and leadership. And that’s not extra. But that’s built into the curriculum.
And if somebody is interested in one of the Streams, would electives be available for them to focus on that in the curriculum?
Well, there are groups that meet, and they do like, they may have a journal club about it, or different activities, discussion groups and all that sort of thing.
Alright getting back to something you said earlier about this, the small group learning. And they, I think you said it was groups of nine. Is that like one group for the first year, one group for the second year? Or is it throughout the curriculum, or is it for different courses?
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. So the first group is for the first semester. So it’s from the beginning up until the winter break, and the longitudinal educator with that, and then they flip into another group. And this is very good because they get to work with a number of their different classmates, and then they get a different longitudinal educator, and then that stays with them until the summer, and then in the fall they have a third group. So they’re with quite a few of their classmates through that period of time.
And what is the longitudinal Alliance program as well as the Community Alliance program? Those were two interesting elements I noticed.
The Student Alliance program is where the student gets assigned from the beginning to a patient with some sort of chronic illness, like my mother did this years ago, when this was sort of an optional thing, and the students would would call and check on her, actually even come to our house sometimes, and the idea is for the student to see medicine from the patient’s point of view, so they may be able to go to some of their appointments with them, and so on and so forth. And that starts from the very beginning.
The Community Alliance program is our attempt to really connect the students with our surrounding neighborhoods and the issues that they have so they get a project and a community group to work with, and they find out what they feel they need. It’s not us imposing it on them. And then they work with that group to help them achieve it. And I think this is pretty successful. We do have some neighborhoods right around the medical school that are underserved, and there are areas of need. So this has been a very important part of the new curriculum.
Could you give an example of a project they work on?
You know, I’m not so familiar with that and wouldn’t want to give you anything. And it’s sort of a work in progress, too, because, you know, some groups are more successful than other groups, and so on. So I’m not too sure.
No problem. Let’s turn to medical school admissions, which I know is your specialty. What do you learn from the secondary essays that you don’t get from the primary.
You know, the committee spends a lot of time discussing what the secondary essay should be. So you know, the three essays that we have are about three aspects of the application that we’re very interested in finding out about. So one is about teamwork, what experience they’ve had working in a team.
How that influences them. And that’s really important, because, you know, physicians always work as a team, you know, as a nephrologist, you know, I would work with the renal social workers. The dialysis nurses, the dietician, and we would meet every month and go over the Care Plan, and it was a very satisfying way to work. So teamwork is one of the things that we want to hear about. Another one is a difficult situation that they faced and how they overcame that that shows resilience, which is a very important feature for a physician. And the third one is how they have interacted with people, with other backgrounds than them and make sure they understand, you know, the cultural differences of people, and this is very important for a future physician also, who will take care of all kinds of people.
That was a great answer. Thank you. Does UPSOM prefer Pennsylvania residents?
Well, we do have a fair number, and the tuition is just a little bit lower for Pennsylvania residents. But we are really a national, actually, even an international school. We usually get applicants for maybe 48 of the States and from a number of countries around the world.
So you take international applicants, also?
We take international applicants, and so on. So, but the cost does end up. eing maybe 25% [up] from Pennsylvania, because people, especially those from Southwestern Pennsylvania. They kind of know what the school is all about. They understand the relationship with the Medical Center, and so they’re more likely to come if we accept them.
Sure that makes sense.
I noticed an interesting chart on your site that showed the following 83% of admitted students have non-clinical community service. 86% have clinical community service, 92% have research experience and 87% have shadowing experience.
How much do you like to see each of the above and what, qualitatively, are you looking for with these experiences? And I’ll tell you why I asked about the qualitative aspect after you respond.
Well, I would say, number one is the clinical experience. So going to medical school is a very big decision to make. I mean, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of money, and it’s just not for everybody. So the committee absolutely wants to know that the person has really tested this decision, and that they know what they’re getting into. So the committee likes to see both exposure to patients, but also shadowing, so exposure to physicians. So they understand, I would say, combined together, it should be a minimum of 100 hours, and that would be on the low end. We actually rate the amount of clinical exposure using a 5 point scale 5 would be high. So I would say 100 hours might be a 3 on the 5 point scale. So that’s absolutely critical.
Number two, because we have research as a requirement to graduate from our medical school. We do like to see exposure to research, that they’re interested in research. They need to understand that they will be doing research while they’re in medical school. It’s not that we expect everybody to become a researcher, you know, once they’re done with medical school, but they all need to understand the importance of research in advancing medicine. You know there’s going to be new discoveries. And so they need to understand that. And then we also like to see activities that show that the candidate really cares about other people, and that they’re willing to invest their time in that, so that might be a helpline of some sort. It might be volunteering in the prison system. There’s a lot of different things that they could do in that area.
Gosh, yeah, the opportunities are endless.I have personally found that applicants tend to focus on the hours, “I’ve spent X hours doing this Y hours, doing that, and Z hours doing whatever,” but when I talk to most admissions officers, they want the applicants to go deeper into the experience. Just telling them in your application what you did is not usually enough.
What would you advise applicants on a more qualitative level in describing these experiences or this exposure that they’ve had.
Well, you know the AMCAS application which everybody pretty much uses, does have a place where you put in the hours and the period of time that you’re doing it. So I would say that the committee members do like to see sort of a longitudinal experience that shows that they have a commitment that it’s not, they’re not just, you know, dialing in it that they really have a commitment to it, and so on. So that’s important now for research. They may have several different research experiences, because they may do it in the summer, and then they may pick up and have a mentor that they work with in their lab even during the school year they may take a gap year and do more research there. So all of these things are important, but you know, I would say the committee does look at the number of hours. So what I would advise candidates is to keep track of what they’re doing right now and keep track of their hours, so that they have that easy to fill out when they do the application.
What are some of the more common mistakes you see applicants make in their either the primary or the secondary applications?
Well, first of all, it’s very important to put your application in early, and most people do. Most people are ready and put it in. And you need to have all your ducks lined up. So if you are really not ready because you just didn’t have enough time to get that clinical experience, or to do enough research whatever, then it’s best to really take an extra year and wait, and then put it in the next year early, and make sure that you have all those activities ready for you. So I think, applying prematurely. If you have started undergraduate and you have a few stumbles at the beginning. You’re having a little trouble adjusting, so maybe you get your grades aren’t great, but then you get adjusted and your grades are much stronger. Your science, GPA. Is rising. Then it’s really best that you do your senior year, and you take that gap year so that the committee can see that you’re making a very, very strong finish. So I think applying prematurely is a somewhat common mistake. Actually.
I think you’re right. I agree with you.
Dr. Karin Ash, one of Accepted’s consultants, recently posted on our slack channel the following:
It is such a pleasure to read an essay that reflects a client’s personality, experiences and goals. But this year I have noticed more clients are using ChatGPT to “ refine their essays”. I’m seeing similar phrasing across different clients sentences like this. I experienced firsthand the financial and structural barriers that limit opportunities for many. Yet even in these challenging circumstances there were glimmers of hope. Education became my beacon, promising a path to overcome financial and gender biases.
Are you seeing robotic sentences like this one? And if you do, do they harm an applicant’s chances of admission or do you overlook that kind of verbiage?
You know, artificial intelligence is very interesting, and it’s going to have a tremendous impact on medicine. I was visiting a dear friend, also a nephrologist in Philadelphia last week, and she was showing me their new clinic, and I was just amazed with it, and they have a lot of abilities to use AI to do their notes, and so on. So it’s definitely going to be, and is already part of medicine.
I know that some people get very upset with the idea that people are using AI to write their essays, and so on feel so strongly about it. As long as you make it yours. It needs to be your essay. What I have found over the years, even before AI. Is that people get so much help with their personal statements, you know, the long essay, and personality comes out of it. It comes across almost like a little CV, and it’s sort of boring, actually. And the person doesn’t come across.
Right.
It’s very important when the person writes these essays, both the long essays and the supplemental essays that it comes from their heart. It’s what they are all about, and it needs to be real. And if that’s the case and they use a little, you know, chatGPT to write it, but then they have to revise it, and they have to make it theirs. And that’s important, actually.
I’ve occasionally used chatGPT, either in coming up with a subject line or a headline, or just a…
I mean, I have a sister, and she uses it to take the notes of the meetings online meetings.
Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of using it. But I think your point of making it yours is the key.
Yes, yes. Yes, and you know they need to tell their story and it it will be clear if it’s a kind of fake that that will come across, and that won’t help them.
No, no, I agree and and when I have used it I’ve always changed it. I’ve never taken it verbatim.
Exactly. Yeah. The other thing is, they need to be very careful that their grammar is correct, that their punctuation is correct. You know we’re the University of Pittsburgh, and so Pittsburgh has an H at the end. So you know, make sure that you spell it correctly, because we kind of think they haven’t paid a lot of attention to looking at us and finding out what the school is like. If they’re going to spell Pittsburgh incorrectly. So little things count up.
What can someone expect from interview day, or interview experience at UPSOM?
Yeah, well, getting an interview is a big first step. So for whatever reason, this past year, we had 10,000 applications complete their interviews.
Wow!
Yeah, we’re not quite sure why that was the case. But it was so. We actually have taken to hiring seasonal screeners that we train to read over these applications, because with the SCOTUS decision, it really is important to read over and learn who this person is, and that takes a great deal of time. So you know, we have maybe a dozen or so, and they do the first screen here, and then they use metrics to look at things like compassion and clinical exposure and research, and so on, and then they can decide either no, or maybe. But then there’s a second screener who’s a very experienced person. It could be a committee member, or it could be those of us in the office. I do a lot of these. And then the second screener, if the first is a Maybe says Yes, and then goes ahead and invites them, or may say No. Now the Nos by the first reader also gets a second look, and some of them get converted, not too many. And then they may get a third screen actually. So that’s an important part of it. So once we invite them, then they schedule their own online. They pick from one of the open dates, they schedule themselves, and then, on the interview day, we have a very structured process, and it’s very consistent from one applicant to another. We want to be very fair to everybody. We’re online. We’re all virtual. So we can’t start at, you know, 8 o’clock in the morning because we get a lot of people from the West Coast. So we start at 10 o’clock. That’s 7 o’clock on the West coast. We think that’s reasonable.
And then I do what’s called a greeting. So we have about 12 to 15 per day. So I have them all introduce themselves to each other and to me, and then I go over the day, so they know exactly what to expect and then that takes about half an hour, and then they get 15 min off, and then they have their faculty interview. The faculty member gets their short essays and their activities from AMCAS. That’s all. They don’t get their academics and that interview is from 10:45 to 11:15.
Again it’s virtual, and then they have a whole hour before the student interview. Now, the reason we have that time is, if the faculty interviewer has to cancel at the last minute. For instance, we have an obstetrician who interviews for us. Well, she called me right before interview, and said, I have to go deliver a baby.
Things you can’t plan right?
Then, you know, we have to find somebody else to do it, or maybe I have to do it, and I have to look at their essays and whatever. But even if I started at, you know, 11:30, I can still finish up by noon, and they’re still on schedule. So what we do with that hour is we have a what we call a waiting lounge, and they can always get on the waiting lounge and hang out together and get to know each other. That’s actually getting very good reviews. They like it. We don’t get involved with that; it’s just the candidates for the day, and then at 12:15, we have the student interview. This is when the students are free. It’s their lunch hour.
So the students are blinded to everything except what’s on the screen, which is the name of the student and their undergraduate institution that works out quite well for us. Both the faculty and the student interview are semi-structured, so they have questions that they have to ask, and then it takes maybe 15 minutes of the interview, and then the rest of the time they can ask about other things, and so on. So the student interview is also about half an hour, and then the last thing we have, which is kind of a little unique for Pitt Med is, we have a small group exercise.
So we split the group into three. So there’s four or five in each small group. They have a facilitator who’s usually a faculty member who’s very experienced with doing small groups. I do a lot of the small groups myself. We have about 12 cases from which we can pick which one we want to use. We put it in the chat. We have somebody read aloud, and then they discuss it for about 40 min. The facilitator just puts prompts in whatever, and the facilitator keeps track of what they’re saying and they’re being evaluated on how they work as a team. As I said, teamwork is really important to us, and then we wrap it up at the end, and when I do it I usually talk a little bit about how this exercise is a little different than how we do. We do a flip classroom in our small groups, and this is more like a problem-based learning exercise, and they seem to appreciate that. And then we have a little closing session at 2, just very short to say what’s coming next, and that’s the day. So it’s from 10am to a little bit after 2pm, and we think that’s enough time to be spending online.
That would be a lot. I’m trying to remember if I’ve come across other medical schools that do group interviews, that have a group project.
A lot of schools do MMIs, and we thought of going to MMIs. But I think MMIs favor a certain personality, and so we never moved to that. Also, we see the day as sort of a two way street. It’s also to recruit the candidates, sure. And so we send them an evaluation at the end of the day electronically, and ask them to rate the different parts of the day. And then they can write comments. And so we read all these over, and then we kind of tweak the day based on that and the faculty and the student interview. They get very, very good scores. The candidates really, really like them. So we don’t want to get rid of that, because it’s really for them as well as for us.
How do they rate the group exercise?
Well, it’s so the faculty and the student interview are like a 4.8 or a 4.7 out of 5. 5 being high, small group exercise gets maybe a 4.3. There is a core, maybe 8% of them who just don’t like it. And they say that in the comments. But you know those people, maybe they don’t belong at Pitt Med because iIt’s small group curriculum. So if they’re not comfortable with that, then they should go to a different medical school.
That makes sense.
When does Pitt stop sending out interview invitations?
Well, we start kind of early, and we did that back when we interviewed in person. Because, you know, the weather isn’t so good always in January and February in Pittsburgh. So we usually start interviewing in August towards the end of August. Now we never interview when the students are on break because students do the interviews for us. So during our breakwe don’t interview. This year we managed to finish before the winter break, but often we have to go a little bit into January. So the deadline for the secondary is the middle of November.
So we’re kind of reviewing up until sort of the end of November. And then those last people, if invited, they’re gonna have their interview spots in December. If we’re finishing in December before the winter break.
Actually finished pretty early.
We finish earlier than a lot of places. So out of that 10,000, we invited about 845 to interview. That’s a tough decision. Very, very tough decision. Yeah.
How do you winnow it down?
Well, our Dean, who came in 2020, he came up with this little mnemonic, called, you know we have this phrase, Hail to Pitt! Hail!
Okay.
He took the hail and he turned it into this. H is for healer. A is for activist. I is for innovator and L is for leadership, and he’s telling us this is what we should be looking for in the students that you know come to Pitt Med. And so we do. And of course we want strong academics. We want all the activities and so on. And but we’re also looking for people that we think that if we accept them, we have a reasonable chance of matriculating them. We’re not an Ivy League school, so if somebody has gone to Harvard or Yale, or one of these Ivy League schools, Brown. Then they’re not so likely to come to Pitt Med. So we do get students from those places. But we do take that into consideration when we invite them to enter. We like a wide variety of people from many different undergraduate schools, many different states, and sure. So. that’s part of our search for diversity.
That sounds like you will get a lot of diversity if you go that route.
How do you assess multiple MCAT scores?
Well, we have something called a phase sheet, which sort of summarizes all the academics and it will have all the MCAT scores. We do mostly consider the one with the highest score, but we do look at all of them, and if they have taken it three times, and they just haven’t done very well, then, that’s going to be a little bit harmful to the candidate. We do like to look past the MCAT, though I personally think the grades are very important, especially the science grades.
But we do run statistics, you know, on, I know there’s national statistics, too, on these, and if somebody has a like a 506 or higher MCAT, then pretty much just as well as far as passing things and passing step one on the first try as somebody who has like a 520. So we do look at a wide variety of MCATs in now. The grades are kind of important. If they don’t do very well as an undergraduate. Then they need to have some more coursework.
Right, posbac or Masters.
Even some sort of science courses other than MPH. Is fine. But that’s not really hard science, so they need to show that they can do the hard sciences.
Okay makes sense. As we’re speaking, it’s the very end of January. This will probably air in early March, and by then most applicants will know if they applied this past cycle, will know if they are accepted or not.
What advice do you have for those applicants who are concluding they weren’t successful, and who want to reapply?
Well, they need to really look and see what schools they’ve been applying to. Is it reasonable? I mean, if they’re applying to all the top schools like Harvard and Yale, whatever. And they’re sort of. And they have sort of okay academics, but not fabulous. Then they’re not not making a wise decision, are they? They have to be realistic about the schools that they’re applying to. And you know, some students, maybe they need to go to a Doctor of Osteopathy school. You know. Those schools take people who have a little bit lower academic credentials. You could still become a physician. You can still do a residency, and so on. And they tend, some of them are pretty big, and take a lot of people, and so on. So. And you need to think about what your deficiencies were in your application. Was it that you applied to the wrong schools? Was it because, you know, you just don’t have a good enough science grade point average? Do you need to think about the MCAT and maybe take a course and retake it? Do not have clinical experience? I mean there’s a lot of possibilities about why you might not have been accepted.
Did you apply late?
You’ve been given an interview. If you don’t get in interviews, then there’s really something wrong, isn’t there?
Some schools are pretty stingy with their interviews. Some schools are more generous, but certainly, if you don’t get an interview anywhere then you did something wrong and you have to figure out what it is.
I have many times said that the foundation of a successful application is applying to the right schools, which is another way of saying what you just said, so you know I couldn’t agree with you more.
Very big classes. So they’re going to interview more people, and they’re going to accept. So like in Pennsylvania, we have both Pennsylvania, Jefferson and Drexel. Both of them are very large classes, schools. So you know, these might be school, and they interview much later in the season, too. So these might be schools that a person could consider, you know, applying to.
And on a forward-looking note, let’s say, somebody’s listening to this podcast and they’re a first time applicant. Maybe they’re planning to apply this upcoming cycle 2025, maybe they’re looking ahead to 2026. What advice would you give them?
Well, they need to make sure that if they, if they go to a school that has pre-med advisors, they need to go and talk to those people, and they need to listen to those people. If those people are telling them you’re not ready. You need more clinical experience. You need, XYZ,. You need more coursework, or whatever they need to listen to that person. That person knows what they’re talking about, and then they need to correct those deficiencies. They’re in such a hurry to apply sometime. You know. They’re young. They’re in their early twenties, and they have plenty of time. It’s kind of a mistake to keep having to apply over and over again and break your heart, you know, with this, and maybe not even get any interviews. You want to get everything lined up, you know, the 1st time and make sure you’re successful.
Absolutely. I recently saw somebody ask a question, am I behind? I think they’re sophomore or junior in college? Am I behind? It’s not a race. You can’t be behind.
Right? Right? So half of our students, you know, take at least one gap year. Some people take 2 gap years. I’m a big fan of that. I think it makes the candidate more mature. I think it makes them a much stronger candidate. They can do a lot of things with that extra year or two a lot of things that I mean they need to do something related to medicine, either research, or some sort of clinical experience, or or whatever, but it will enhance their application, I feel.
Right, and it’ll probably make them happier people, too.
Yes, I mean, it might be a good idea to take a little break. So yeah, we have a guaranteed admit program where we admit, you know, a core group of people straight out of high school to the University of Pittsburgh and as long as they maintain their grade point average they get into the medical school and they don’t take the MCAT. So it’s a pretty popular program, actually. And I met with some of them today just to get a little feedback about the program. And this one young lady said, well, she had finished her undergraduate in 3 years, so now she is getting an MPH, so there’s a lot of things you can do because we don’t like, we don’t let them start after three years, If they’re guaranteed. We don’t want them coming in when they’re 20. We want them to be mature people. But you know there’s a lot of interesting things they can do.
And people are different. And you know, some people love school, and they’re going to stay in school as long as they can, and maybe she’ll go into, who knows, be an Academician. And other people, I think, would be much happier college students if they didn’t feel this intense pressure to go straight from college, and they probably would have higher grades and possibly a higher MCAT, so they’d be able to be more successful medical school applicants.
The average age for years and years of our incoming students is 24. So that tells you right there that those, you know, a lot of people who are taking that little bit of extra time.
Is there a question you would have liked me to ask you.
You know. One of the things that I think a lot of people who are not from Southwestern Pennsylvania don’t realize is one of the tremendous strengths of our school is the relationship with the Medical Center. So UPMC, I mean, it’s University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, but it’s not University of Pittsburgh. It’s kind of confusing.
It’s really a healthcare system. And when they formed in the late 1980s, it’s because these hospitals that were affiliated with the medical school, but they were independent from each other. So they came together, and they formed this medical system. And it’s really a tremendous powerhouse. They have about 40 hospitals, many, many and so on. And it’s a tremendous resource for our students. So the clinical training is just fabulous, you know. I mean, we have outstanding hospitals in every area. So I, for instance, trained at Presbyterian, which is physically connected to Ellen Magee Scape Hall, which is where the medical school is, and it’s an excellent hospital, about 600 beds. It’s a med surgical hospital, no children, and that’s where I did my medicine and my nephrology training. Well, now, they’re building a brand new Presby tower right in front of the old one. It’s going to be just absolutely fabulous, and all of our students do at least 4 of their 8 weeks of medicine there and then we have Magee Women’s Hospital just down the street. This is a huge OBGYN hospital. It’s a women’s hospital. It’s part of UPMC, too. Everybody does their OBGYN there, and they deliver just a huge number of babies there. And then we have a pediatric Children’s Hospital when it became part of UPMC that allowed money to build a brand new Children’s Hospital, they moved it a little bit off campus. But there’s a shuttle that runs between them, and it’s just a beautiful, fabulous hospital with wonderful pediatricians to teach our students.
So we have these core hospitals that are there for our students, and this is where they do their clinical training. And I think it’s just, you know, outstanding, outstanding, clinical training, and always has been even before. So the new curriculum, I don’t see that it’s changed the clinical rotations all that much, because it was already a strength of our curriculum. Yeah.
It sounds like that access to that medical center is a tremendous strength, and I’m glad you raised it. You mentioned it very early in the interview, and I’m glad you came back to it.
They’re very similar, you know. I mean the physicians there. So there’s about 4,000 physicians, and about 2,000 are academic physicians, and they’re paid for by both Pitt and by UPMC. And so, you know, they’re there because they want to be in an academic medical center. So they enjoy working with the students. And so the students, I mean, there’s a core group of faculty, maybe 3- or 400 that do a lot of the teaching. But you know there’s something for everybody, no matter what you’re interested in, we’re going to have it for you.
Dr. Piraino. I think we’re just about out of time. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me today and introducing me and our listeners to the University of Pittsburgh.
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- Deep Dive into Duke Medical: An Interview with Dr. Linton Yee
- Get Accepted to Loyola Stritch Medical School
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